Take a look at this photo.
Now imagine that back-seater as a Marine. All Marine officers go through the platoon leadership school and are ground-guys first before they go into an airplane. This is how it should be. Now the next part which should be obvious, that Marine back-seater could also have a tour as a JTAC. Add that all up and the two-seat Super F is an important aircraft for the USMC.
With Blue Force Tracker and ROVER and some other things, a good CAS aircraft for something this big.
To answer Sol's question. Everything on that jet works as advertised. It also, always leaves the deck with a gun.
As for the electronic warfare stuff: the Super airframe (like the Typhoon and Rafale) is like a sculpted digital tuning fork with many knowns in its base RCS (more so than previous 4-gens built 20 years ago). This means that the on-board defensive jammer, towed decoy (where the new ALE-55 can emit and spoof) is all coordinated by a defensive combat system that can better calculate aircraft vulnerability based on carry configuration. In the end, the jamming is more efficient and has to do less work. Extreme example, a perfectly clean, nose-on Super with everything stripped. Useful as a brush beater with its AESA radar to help F-22s on the same team.
RCS tuned aircraft with on-board defensive jamming better defeat most legacy air defenses or many lower power mobile battlfield short-to-medium range systems in the threat bands that are trying to kill you (usually X and Ku). The Super Block II fused and balanced defensive does that well.
Bigger threats is where it can be more of a problem.
That is a very broad generalization of "balanced" survivability built into the Super. Dirty Harry in Magnum Force: "a mans' got to know his limitations". You know your limitations with the Super's Block II defensive suite. A better warm-fuzzy than most.
That is what you get with an E/F Block II.
The Block I Super defensive suite is a story for another day.
USMC future tac-air? What would be nice:
Block II Super Hornet two-seat F (also on tour with one squadron per deployed nuke carrier)
Harvest Hawk KC-130J (A wonderful idea for strike) -already in-place-
Yankee and Zulu helos: Good VTOL -already in-place-
1 comment:
That was a good write up in support for a Marine Super Hornet option.
I'd also ponder such an hypothetical Marine F-18E/F as being the first US tactical fighter integrating an ATIRCM system.
When is that game-changing add-on expected again on the F-35... Block V? So, maybe 2025, assuming they can afford simultaneous block 5 upgrades (hopefully) along w/ FRP procurement?
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